The invention relates in general to weapons and in particular to a mount for a machine gun that is fired from a helicopter.
Machine guns such as the M240 may be mounted in a helicopter and fired while the helicopter is underway. The machine gun is attached to the helicopter via a machine gun mount. The machine gun mount allows the machine gun to rotate in the horizontal plane (i.e., rotate around a vertical axis) and also the rotate in a vertical plane (i.e., about a horizontal axis). The primary aircraft for mounting the M240 are the UH60 and CH47 helicopters. On the CH47 helicopter, the machine gun may be door, window or ramp mounted.
Existing mounts suffer from a variety of problems. Mobility of the machine gun during firing and stowage may be restricted due to interference with other structures inside the helicopter. The machine gun dust cover (on the cartridge ejection opening) cannot be opened while the machine gun is in the mount. The ammunition magazine, that is part of the machine gun mount, requires two-handed operation to remove from the mount and replace with a full ammunition magazine. The lid of the ammunition magazine is susceptible to accidental opening because the latch may be opened by simply pushing on the top of the latch. The empty cartridge links tend to jam up at the link collector chute. The mounting pins are not captive and, therefore, may be easily lost.